


to safer ground

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Healing, Moving On, Post-Canon, inside of Veronica's head post musical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 18:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Veronica heals. Slowly.





	to safer ground

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: past abusive relationship, mentions of suicide. Basically anything that's canon for Heathers.
> 
> Title from "Running With The Wolves" by AURORA.

It is midnight, and Veronica cannot sleep. She lies in her bed with the covers bunched around her waist and stares at the ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars she and Martha had pasted up there, god, years ago now. She remembers tip-toeing on her chair, straining for the cracked plaster. Martha, taller already, had reached up easily, pink dress stretching against her stomach. They’d arranged them just like the magazine had said, just the way they were when Veronica was born. They don’t actually _glow,_ her mother had said, amused, when Veronica had pulled them out of the magazine with a shriek of excitement. They just collect sunlight, store it all up, and when it’s dark, that sunlight is still there, brightening up your dark room.

They last a _really long time,_ Veronica thinks. Eight years of sunlight glued to her ceiling. Things and people have come and gone but the stars have stayed right there, constant through it all. “Non est ad astra mollis e terris via," he’d said when he’d first seen them, flinging himself, black coat and all onto her bed. “Though you’ve made a pretty good attempt.”

“Of course you know Latin.” She’d laughed, rolling into him, feeling the long line of his warmth against her body. “For the monolingual in the room?”

“There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. Seneca. You should check him out.” He’d looked down at her, smiling, his hand finding her hip, pulling her closer, brushing his mouth against hers. She’d been so giddy to have this, to have a beautiful boy lying on her bed, kissing her, quoting Latin, after Heather, before Kurt and Ram and this whole, awful mess he’d led her into. So giddy, so happy. Oh innocence, how you’re missed.

She takes a deep breath against the sudden tears swelling in her throat, presses her fists against her eyes. _You’re not allowed to cry,_ she says to herself. _It’s not worth crying about. You know this, you know this, you…damnit._

It’s not like she can go to the school counsellor about this, geez, wow, “Yeah, you know my ex-boyfriend, the one who moved away again, yeah he didn’t move away, he died and I killed him and guess what those suicides, they weren’t murder either that was us too, yeah, mm, you’re calling the police, smart move Mrs Hemingway, smart move.”

Not a good plan. She has things to be doing, wrongs to be making right; contrary to popular belief, none of that is going to be happening from a jail cell. Great showing, Veronica, nearly-eighteen and already a murderer. Could your life get even more fucked up than it already is?

The stars blink at her. She doesn’t get nightmares or flashbacks, not, perhaps, as she should. She just can’t sleep. That's all.

...

“Darling, are you okay?” Her mother hovers at her shoulder. “You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping.”

“I’m fine,” Veronica says, the lie snapping against her lips like an elastic band, standing up from the breakfast table. Her mother frowns, reaches out to feel her forehead.

“You’re not running a fever.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m fine.”

“I haven’t seen that JD boy around here recently. Are you two still going out? I know you had that fight with him a while back…”

The words are a stampede, boiling dust and hooves and sheer panic. Veronica wants to cry again. Why is she always on the verge of tears? Why can’t she just bloody well get _over_ this? “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, but her voice cracks and her mother has this _I call your bullshit_ expression on her face, and Veronica caves, has to grip the back of the chair, the coat slipping away from her fingers.

“Come here,” her mother says, pulling Veronica close, and suddenly Veronica finds herself sobbing and sobbing, her hands clawing at her mother’s blouse. “Oh my darling.” Hands in Veronica’s hair, the smell of raspberry jam and kitchen spray, home. “He’s moved away, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Veronica mumbles. Moved away, to the afterlife. A bit more permanent than the next state over, not that she could tell her mother that. Did JD’s father even miss his son when he never came home? She doubts it, quite frankly.

“It’s always hard when things work out, especially when it’s your first love. Don’t make that noise, I saw the way you looked at him. But it’ll get better eventually. You just have to hold onto that. And he’ll always be in your heart, if you want him to be.”

The grandfather clock chimes half-eight. “I’m going to be late for school,” Veronica pulls away, rubs her fingers under her eyes; they come away smeared black with mascara. “God, I’m a mess.”

Her mother doesn’t even bother with the usual reprimand about taking the Lord’s name in vain, just looks sad. “You can take the day off if you need to, honey. It’s been quite a few weeks, hasn’t it? All those…attempts…and then the gas explosion…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Veronica says, grabbing her bag, bending to pick up her coat. “I’ve got a Lit test, I can’t skip today.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

...

She gets into school, and there he is, leaning against her locker, nose deep in some book that hasn’t been taken out of the library in years, so beautiful it makes her chest go all tight and fizzing. There is he, smiling at her in the corridor as they pass each other on the way to class. It’s the sort of smile that edges into his eyes, cautious, the sort of smile he saves just for her, the one that is surprised at its own existence, faintly mocking at how sappy its being.

[she’d always blush, beam back. Heather McNamara would dig a yellow-jumpered elbow into Veronica’s ribs and say, “you guys are _so cute_!”]

There he is, sitting across the cafeteria table, eating slowly and listening to her talk about whatever subject had taken her fancy that day. How nice it had been to have a break from lipgloss and parties, to exercise her brain for once, to have someone _other_ than Martha to rave to about nuclear physics or nineteenth century literature.

He’s everywhere she looks, quiet, watchful. Heather Chandler sneers, Kurt and Ram bicker and make inane jokes, much the same as they did in life, but JD…he just watches, eyes dark and mouth twisted ruefully, and god, oh god, it hurts more than the guilt, more the regret: the wish that things could have been different, that she’d seen his crazy earlier, forced him to get help, helped him get away from his father. Maybe he’d still be alive, if she’d been more decisive, still kicking her ankle in special assembly to make her laugh in front of the TV cameras, putting his arm around her in the lunch queue…not dead and lined up in the parade of ghosts Veronica is going to trail around for the rest of her life…

...

Some days it isn’t so bad. She gets a good grade in her class, her teacher smiles at her when she gets a tricky answer. Martha brings in homemade cookies and gives Veronica a really long hug, now that they’re actually friends again. Heather Duke smiles, sometimes, shows off her newly whitened teeth that glimmer against her dark skin, makes some catty comment that’s more funny than claws-out mean. They all laugh, all four of them, Veronica and Martha and two Heathers, building on their new foundations, starting again. Heather McNamara kisses Veronica’s cheek as she gets out of the car, blonde ponytail swinging.

“When are you going to pass your test, loser?” Veronica laughs.

“Ne-ver,” Heather sing-songs back. “How could I drive to school alone without you and George Michael? Would you be that cruel?”

“You’re so ridiculous.”

“Love you, see you tomorrow!”

“Love you too, don’t be late this time!”

And so on.

…

Some days she can’t breathe.

…

Others she goes to the rebuilt sports hall, sits right in the centre above the boiler room, the bleachers collecting the echoes of her footsteps, sending them swinging through the rafters. She folds her legs, presses her hands to the squeaky-clean linoleum.

“Hey,” she says. “Me again. You must be sick of me by now, but I don’t know where else I’d go to talk to you. Not like I _want_ to go back to the cemetery, even if people did know you were dead and put some kind of marker up for you, I mean not that you’d like some bourgeois gravestone…”

…

“I hate you, how could you do this to me? How could you have dragged me into it, how…!?”

…

“Oh, god, JD, you’ll never _believe_ what happened today! Heather Mac was reading a _book,_ an honest-to-god _book_! I thought I was seeing things! But no, there she was, Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, for fun. Apparently she liked the stuff I was quoting at her in the car the other day, and wanted to read the rest of it – can you believe it?”

…

“I miss you, asshole. Wish you’d just materialise and give me a hug. Gah, this is so unfair, _why_ did you do it? Why? Why couldn’t we have just been normal, god, what I wouldn’t give for that, what I…

…

“I don’t know if I even _should_ be missing you. You were so messed up, you _killed_ people for god’s sake, why can’t I just see that and not see you, you know? It would be so much easier if I could just hate you and get over it all…”

…

“Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

…

Ghosts don’t answer back. She wishes they would, wishes that he would talk to her, but he just watches, all day, every day, and at night she’s still not sleeping, though it’s not nightmare, it really _really_ isn’t, just the guilt and the longing heavy on her chest, their claws hanging onto her ribs for dear life and god when is this going to end when? It’s a wonder she’s not covered in scars from it all, the way JD used to cover her breasts and thighs in love-bites, all hidden, so no-one knew they were having sex at all. McNamara and Duke knew, of course, they’d wink and nudge and giggle whenever they’d stopped being mean long enough to notice.

Duke had even dragged her into the restroom once, shoved some condoms into her hand. “Always have some on you,” she’d said, something unyielding and fierce on her face. The two of them were the only ones in there; one of the cubicle doors had groaned open. “And make sure he treats you well, okay? Boys can be jerks when it comes to sex.”

“…okay?” Veronica had closed her fingers around the crinkle of the foil packets, and Heather had smiled, tight, before marching out of the door and re-taking Chandler’s empty mantle of queen bee. There’d been nothing of the girl in the restroom in the one who’d shriek-giggled as she and McNamara had left Veronica alone in that field with Kurt and Ram, nothing of that girl for weeks until the explosion had shaken all their defences, sent cracks running pell-mell through their walls. Now, well. Maybe things are different.

Duke pulls her into the restroom again, sometime in March, before school, glaring some of the freshmen out. “You look like _hell,_ ” she says, apropos of nothing. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Veronica snaps. Heather rolls her eyes.

“No, Veronica, you’re not. You barely eat, you look like you don’t sleep anymore. Tell me.”

“What, so you can spread it all over the school?”

“You know I wouldn’t do that. Not anymore. You’re my friend, stupid, friends help each other. Is it JD?”

Is it JD, is it JD…that’s all everyone ever thinks it is and yes, it is quite a big bit of him and the hole he’s left in her life and the bloody awfulness of not knowing how to grieve someone so fucked up, someone who did _horrific_ things but someone you loved with a kind of intensity you thought only existed in melodrama, but hello, accessory to murder, that’s also the other half and there’s _no way in hell_ she’d ever tell _anyone._ It would be better to be _dead._

“Yeah,” she says, for want of anything better, for need of getting Heather off her back. “Yeah, it is. I miss him. But what can you do, eh? Love isn’t going to save the world.”

“It’s okay to be upset, you know. You two were close.”

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Well if you do, I’m here. Hope you know that, okay? And I know more than Heather or Martha do about this kind of stuff, _believe me,_ so yeah, if you ever want someone to talk to then that’s okay. I’m here.”

“Thanks,” Veronica says, hefting her bag up her shoulder. “Come on, that’s the bell.”

…

One night, her parents are out, and all Veronica is doing is lying on her bed, supposedly reading her book. She’d been so excited for _Imago_ to come out, to find out what the Oankali were going to do, but now it’s here she can’t seem to concentrate, and her eyes keep flitting to the stars, the straight plastic outlines, the slight yellow-greenish sick looking tint. She’s been feeling a bit under the weather for the last few days, coming down with a cold, and now she’s got a headache, pounding away at the back of her head, and she can’t turn her thoughts off; they dribble like golden syrup, sickly-sweet, into the backs of her eyes, making the world spin giddily around her. Murder, murder, murderer, _murderer._ God, she can’t do this.

“Sorry Octavia,” she tells the book, smoothing her fingers over the cover and putting it back on the bedside table. “I’ll finish you later.”

She gets up, takes her scarf and the car keys, but after a moment’s hesitation, puts them back, finds a couple of her father’s beers in the fridge instead. The glass is cold against her palms, and she feels a little thrill as she slips them into the huge pockets of her jacket; this is okay, this is the kind of teenage misdemeanour easily forgiven. She locks the front door and begins to walk, concentrating on the yellow line in the middle of the road, the darkness particulate around her, blue-black specks vibrating in Brownian motion.

A few cars whoosh past, and she stands in the verge waiting. One of them beeps at her, and she scowls at it. It’s not as though she’s being any kind of danger.

It’s a while before she notices she’s stopped, is standing in JD’s old front yard. The house is silent, sleeping; no one’s taken it since Bud up and left soon after the explosion. This is where it all started, she thinks, remembers the feeling of standing here half-drunk, horny as hell, swirling the taste of her emergency mints around in her mouth, alcohol red and reckless in her veins. She’d walked across the yard, just as she’s doing now, climbed the lattice up to JD’s room, unpopped the window and slid in. She stands in the window, swaying slightly; nothing has changed. JD’s posters are still up, the little stack of books he actually owned, his camp-bed, still made. It hits her and her knees buckle; before she knows it she’s on the floor, staring at it all. All she’d need is him rising from his bed in shock at her sudden appearance, his eyes wide and surprised – she’d _surprised_ him, the kid who looked like he’d seen it all – to complete the scene. All she’d need is her words, steadier than she’d realised, the dawning realisation on his face, the sudden want between her legs, the way she’d stepped closer and kissed him and his hands had found her waist and he’d kissed her back, slow to start with, then more, more and more and more…

She’s shivering – god, when did it get so cold in here? One of JD’s blankets is still there; she scrambles for it, wraps herself up – _god,_ it still smells like him. No, Veronica, she tells herself firmly. No. Murderer, murderer, he was going to kill you, he loved you, he was going to kill you, he loved you, what’s the difference what’s the…oh _fuck_ her head _hurts,_ when did that come on? One of the beers clank against her hip painfully, and she shucks off the jacket, suddenly too warm, but not willing to give up the blanket, the smell of him…

“You know, if you’re not going to give yourself up, you might as well make peace,” JD says in her head, and she startles.

“You can speak! I was wondering if the explosion had ripped out your vocal chords.”

He comes a bit closer, ethereal, sits on the edge of the camp bed shimmering around the edges. It’s probably a hallucination, the logical side of Veronica’s brain informs her, but she doesn’t care, can’t care. The world is spinning. JD is smiling, sort of, his hand hovers over her hair, not-quite touching.

“Wasn’t sure if you even wanted me to talk to you. I think about doing it, and suddenly you hate me again.”

“Still hate you,” Veronica mumbles. “Maybe.”

“I know. You shot me, remember?”

“Yeah.” Pause. “I’m just…I’m so confused, I…we did really horrible things, JD, and I can’t tell anyone, I’m too much of a coward, I don’t want to go jail, I don’t, I…and you, you made me do them, I would never have thought to have killed people and I just…but I loved you. You were my best friend, and now you’re gone, and I don’t know what to do and I have to make amends somehow, but I’m stuck at Westerberg and we’re all kind of friends now, but then I just…how do I go on? How can I? I don’t even know how I look any of them in the eye anymore, but if I act any different they’ll be onto me and there’s only so long I can pretend the reason I’m sad is that you moved away without telling me goodbye and…”

“I am sorry, for the record. For doing this to you.”

“Are you, though? Really?”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Well you did a pretty _damn_ good job at it, didn’t you? Look at all of this! I’m a murderer, JD, a murderer! And that was you, telling me it was okay, telling me that this was what we were supposed to be doing, that we were making the world right but we weren’t, we _weren’t,_ killing people is _never_ right we should have just stuck it out…and you said you loved me, worshipped me, I mean, who even _says_ that? We’re seventeen, well, I’m eighteen now, but the point stands, and worshipping isn’t healthy I’m not a goddess, I’m not…”

“But you were the only person who’d ever _seen me,_ the first person who’d given any sort of shit at all, talked to me like I wasn’t just that weird new kid, and my only meaningful social interaction had been with books. No wonder I said shit like that, Veronica, jeez!”

“Don’t just quote Baudelaire at me and walk away.”

“Yeah, exactly. You were the first person I’d met who actually knew who Baudelaire _was._ And I will remind you that _you_ showed up in my room, so…”

“I think it would have happened anyway.” Veronica heaves a huge sigh. “God, my head is splitting. This is so weird, JD, I can’t feel my toes. I really wish you were here right now, I wish, I…wish it didn’t all end the way it did, I wish we could have just…I don’t know, fucked off away from your Dad, away from it all, run away to Europe somewhere and maybe you wouldn’t be dead, maybe we could be together and it would all be okay and…oh god, it’s going all black around the edges, JD, I don’t think I can breathe oh shit shit shit, what’s happening what’s…”

“Veronica! Veronica, oh my god,” the slam of the window-frame, footsteps creaking across floorboards. “Shit, stay with me, don’t close your eyes, don’t…”

JD is blurring, his face melting away. “Forgive yourself,” he says. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you, oh _thank god,_ right is there a phone here…”

“JD,” Veronica whispers, reaching out for him but she just encounters the edge of someone’s coat. Fingers wrap tightly around hers. The word is narrowing into a little point of light, very far away, buzzing and

“No, not JD, it’s Duke. God, you silly cow, what are you _doing_ here? Phone, I need a phone, shit Veronica you’re burning up and there’s a…fuck what’s that rash? Okay I’m going for help. Stay here, don’t move.”

The world collapses in on itself. The last thing she sees is JD, smiling, bending over to kiss her forehead. And that’s it.

…

Beep, beep, beep.

“Honey? Honey, can you hear me? Oh I knew we shouldn’t have left her alone, oh…”

“It’s okay, Ellie, she’ll be alright. You heard what the doctor said. Got there just in time.”

“I want her to wake up.”

“I know, I know.”

Beep, beep, beep.

…

Veronica’s eyelids feel as though someone has taken PVA glue to them, sticking together, clumpy. Her mouth is full of something dead and smelly, and her head is swimming, full of water, maybe chlorinated, bright blue. She forces herself to open her eyes, to squint against the blinding light.

“Hey,” a voice says, just off her right side. “You’re waking up.”

“Mom?”

“Nope, it’s Heather. Over here, dummy. Your Mom and Dad went home to get showered, have a rest. I said I’d stay with you for a few hours, have some work to do.”

Her eyes come into focus, and she sees Heather, her hair a huge loose mass of curls and wearing a baggy green jumper, sitting curled into one of the visiting chairs. Her makeup is perfect, as usual, and she’s putting aside some heavy textbook she was reading. “How do you feel?”

“Rotten.”

“No wonder. Meningitis is a nasty one. You’re lucky I found you when I did.”

“You found me?”

She purses her lips, nods. “Yeah. I’d seen you on the side of the road, walking somewhere. I beeped at you, but I don’t think you knew it was me, and you looked really out of it, so I…pulled off, kind of followed you. Here, nurse said you should have some water when you woke up. She’ll be in after her break to check on you.”

Something sick and heavy sinks down into Veronica’s stomach as Heather helps to raise the back of the bed, hands her the glass of water. Heather was _there,_ and Veronica doesn’t remember much but she knows she was talking, she knows JD was there, what if Heather heard what if…

“You were talking,” Heather says, and Veronica clenches her fist around the hospital blanket, tries to fight the panic, rabbit in blazing, blinding headlights. This is it. This is where it all comes out, the murders, the fact that Veronica is a murderer, and Heather’s going to have to call the police and it’s all… “and yeah, you said some things. I know it’s none of my business to pry, but I just wanted to apologise.”

Apologise? What on earth could she be talking about?

“We all thought JD had just moved away, his dad skipped town after all, but I didn’t realise he’d _died._ I’m so, _so_ sorry Veronica. That’s _awful,_ and I can’t believe you’ve been carrying it around all this time. Why didn’t you _tell_ anyone?”

The relief is like a tide, rushing in, relief, she thinks, and more than a little bit of guilt. Once again, she gets away with it. Bully for her. “I…I just…I don’t know, I…”

“You don’t have to explain anything, you know. I won’t press you. I know what it’s like, to have things you want to hide.”

Veronica _stares_ at her, and Heather shrugs. The shoulder of the sweater slips a little, wrinkles, dark green. “I’m not going to tell you what happened. But I will say that being a Heather…kind of went to my head. No-one asked me anything, if I was the one in charge, in control. Defence, I guess. And for the record, JD could be seriously creepy sometimes but around you, I don’t know, he seemed more human, like you were the one thing keeping him together. God, you should have seen him after that fight you’d had, it was like he’d gone completely mad, I’ve never seen anything like it. Terrifying shit. But he didn’t deserve to _die,_ and you don’t deserve to go through all of that. Have you been seeing anyone?”

“Mom wanted to send me to a shrink, for a bit,” Veronica confesses. “Never got around to it.”

“It helps. Maybe you should look into it.”

“Yeah. Maybe I will.”

The door creaks open, and a nurse pokes her head in. Heather reaches over for her book. “Good talk,” she says, and Veronica nods, something settling down inside her. Shrink. Hidden things. JD dead. JD is _dead,_ he is, he’s dead and he’s not coming back. She’ll never be put in that position again, never watch as he raises the gun, never have to fake her own suicide…god, she loved him, but he was poison, silent and deadly. He’s gone, and she’s here, sitting in this hospital bed with the nurse checking her charts, and her future unspools ahead of her, invisible and beckoning, all these years waiting for her, all these wrongs to make right.

It is going to be okay.

The sun streams in through the window, sets the dust motes dancing. For the first time in six, long months, Veronica Sawyer breathes free.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Heathers on Saturday and needed to write this out of my brain, because it was absolutely incredible. I kind of see Veronica and JD as this weird, toxic, binary star kind of dynamic, who are also...well, love each other. In a weird way. Mostly because of the sheer chemistry between Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jamie Muscato, because gosh, that was insane. And Heather Duke being way more than what she seems. Feel free to scream at me about the musical, either here or on Tumblr @barefoot-pianist.


End file.
